The present description is directed generally to fluid treating and dispensing devices, articles, systems, and methods. More particularly, it is related to portable fluid treating and dispensing devices, articles, systems, and methods for potable liquids.
More people are drinking water out of plastic bottles than ever before. Often such water bottles are discarded even though they are reusable. Such practices detrimentally impact the environment. In addition, it takes significant amounts of crude oil to make the plastic water bottles people typically use and discard in a year. Moreover, some retail outlets use significant amounts of space for storing water bottles, thereby diminishing the space they have to sell other products. There is an interest in reusing the water bottles so as to not only reduce detrimental environmental impacts, but also minimize the amount of crude oil that must be used in order to replace discarded water bottles and the like. In addition, there is an interest in enhancing the versatility of treating and dispensing water in a user friendly manner in a wide variety of circumstances.
A variety of water filtration devices are known for treating water for consumers. Typically, there two categories of water filtration devices. One kind includes so-called in-line systems coupled to external sources of fluid and generally require external plumbing as well as have requirements for being sufficiently strong to withstand the attendant pressurization of the fluid. Another kind includes batch units that process water in batches and which require no external plumbing. Examples of batch devices are gravity-fed pitcher/carafes and larger reservoirs in to which water is poured. Pour-through or gravity-fed filtration devices are well-known. They have gained widespread popularity and have numerous uses in variety of environments, such as for example, camping, hiking, boating, and even for emergency preparedness. Many known water filtration devices of the latter category use filtration cartridges that while replaceable are often expensive and relatively difficult to handle.
Often the filtration process used in many filtration cartridges may take several minutes for completion. In addition, these latter devices generally dispense the treated water into a specially constructed container arranged to cooperate with the filtration unit. In other words, the system is not generally compatible with known water bottles, let alone multiple water bottles. Thus, extra steps are often entailed for pouring the contents of the filtration unit into the water bottles. While not necessarily onerous, it may be considered by some to be a more tedious process. It has been suggested that drinking water in bottles is popular because of the healthiness, purity, and taste of the water associated with bottled water. Therefore, there is a desire to provide for such attributes in drinking water under a variety of circumstances. Such circumstances may include, but are not are limited to, drinking water especially for outdoor activities including camping, hiking, boating, and even for emergency preparedness.
While such known water filtration systems have performed satisfactorily, there is nevertheless a continuing interest in making improvements, particularly in view of the limitations and shortcomings noted above.